Fantasy Baseball 2012: New York Met Fan Goes over to the Dark Side During Draft

I am lucky enough to participate in a fantasy baseball league with a live draft. Once a year 12 of us squeeze into the commissioner's man cave and spend a rowdy four hours on our draft.

Most of the managers are Mets fans but somehow a few Yankee fans managed to sneak into the group. We Met fans usually try to make it as miserable as we can for the Yankee fans by having a ceremony outdoors in a safe place where we burn something with a Yankees logo on it. The first time we did it, an unfortunate Yankee fan tried to stamp out the fire, so he had gas fumes on him all day. We tried to distract him during the draft by threatening to flick a lit match at him. We never did that, of course, but it certainly distracted him.

The heated rivalry usually continues into the staffing of our teams. The Mets fans never take Yankee players and vice versa. One Yankee fan always keeps his team name as the Evil Empire, just to gloat over his team's glorious history.

We had our draft recently. The discussions about the Reyes move, the early season injury to David Wright and the bizarre illness of Ike Davis were all being thrown about by the Yankees fans in the pre-draft trash talk.

The league is a keeper league and each team retains six players from the previous year. So when we start the draft, many of the best players are already assigned to a team.

I was pretty happy with my first four picks in the draft, but in the fifth round, I was horrified with my choices. I looked at my rankings, and those of several sources and found that the best player available was Derek Jeter, and I needed a shortstop.

Apparently the long frown on my face or the delay in announcing my pick made it clear to a Yankee fan what my dilemma was. So he started shouting, "The Professor is going over to the dark side, he's going to take Jeter." And his fellow Yankee fans chimed in, "Do it, do it, convert!" And the larger number of Mets fans replied with "No, no, you can't do it!" The chants continued for a few minutes, I frowned and then announced "Chris Carpenter." I just couldn't pick a Yankee. Principles are more important than winning. I don't know what I was thinking. A miracle wasn't going to bring me a shortstop out of thin air.

So the draft proceeded and the snake eventually came around to me in the sixth round. The same chants sprung out again, this time only louder and with more gusto, since there was more beer consumption in the intervening time. The louder the shouts became, the longer the frown became on my face. I started to hitch up my pants, adjust my batting gloves and tap my batting helmet with my bat. I returned to the batter's box and glared out at the pitcher. Then I did the unthinkable. I announced "Derek Jeter" and went over to the Dark Side.

So I can only hope that one of the Yankee fan managers suffers an early season injury to his shortstop, so I can make a trade and recover from this terrible situation.

You can follow the Professor of Fantasy Sports on Twitter @Prof_Bush